The sinking of the Titanic (1912)

  That the Titanic was rushing at a speed of 24½ miles an hour when she crashed into the iceberg.

  That of 2223 persons aboard, only 32 per cent. were saved.

  That all might have been saved but for "negligent indifference" of the steamship Californian to the Titanic's distress signals.

  That those rescued comprised: Sixty per cent. of the first-class passengers, 42 per cent. of second-class, 25 per cent. of third-class and 24 per cent. of the crew.

  That four warnings of "ice ahead" were ignored by the Titanic's officers.

  That the Titanic struck at 10.13 P.M. on Sunday, April 14, and sank at 12.47 A.M. (New York time) on April 15.

  That eight vessels were near at time of the collision with the iceberg and only the Carpathia went to the assistance of the Titanic.

  That there was no panic, but a "short" crew, poorly drilled and poorly commanded, only enough men to partially man the twenty lifeboats.

  Teeming with eloquence, combining praise for heroism and scathing rebuke for negligence and cowardice in the most appalling marine tragedy of history, was the final and official requiem on May 28 in the Senate for the victims of the Titanic. Senator Smith, of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Investigating Committee, summed up his views of the evidence developed.

  That every soul aboard the giant liner might have been saved but for the indifference, inattention and almost criminal neglect of Captain Stanley Lord and the other officers of the Californian was the most startling charge Smith bitterly made.

  "Needless sacrifice" of at least five hundred lives because the "strangely insufficient number of life boats" were not filled was also charged.

  "Obsolete and antiquated shipping laws" and "laxity of regulation and hasty inspection" by the British Board of Trade were denounced by Smith. As a contributory cause he named the indifference of Captain Smith, of the Titanic, for ignoring ice warnings and forcing the Titanic full speed through the northern waters. That Captain Smith had expiated his offense by a heroic death was Smith's tribute to the dead commander.

LACK OF DISCIPLINE ARRAIGNED.

  Lack of discipline among the crew and cowardice of some of its members indicated after the crash was scathingly arraigned. To the two Titanic wireless operators — Phillips and Bride—the speaker paid a glowing tribute. He lauded Captain Rostrom, of the rescue ship, Carpathia.

  In eloquent terms the chairman, Senator Smith, depicted the folly of sending out the greatest ship afloat without sufficiently testing a strange crew and with no drills or discipline. The Titanic, he said, was following the proper course, although one known to be dangerous at that season, but the speed was gradually and continually increased until the maximum was the death-blow.

  Rebuke for those in half-filled lifeboats who "stood by" and refused aid to struggling, drowning swimmers until "all the noise had ceased" was voiced.

  "Upon that broken hull," the Senator concluded, "new vows were taken, new fealty expressed, old love renewed, and those who had been devoted in life went proudly and defiantly on the last life pilgrimage together. In such a heritage we must feel ourselves more intimately related to the sea than ever before, and henceforth it will send back to us on its rising tide the cheerful salutations from those we have lost.

  "'At 10 o'clock on that fateful Sunday evening this latest maritime creation was cutting its first pathway through the North Atlantic Ocean with scarcely a ripple to retard its progress.

  "From the builders' hands she was plunged straightway to her fate and christening salvos acclaimed at once her birth and death. Builders of renown had launched her on the billows with confident assurance of her strength, while every port rang with praise for their achievement; shipbuilding to them was both a science and a religion; parent ships and sister ships had easily withstood the waves, while the mark of their hammer was all that was needed to give assurance of the high quality of the work.

  "In the construction of the Titanic no limit of cost circumscribed their endeavor, and when this vessel took its place at the head of the line every modern improvement in shipbuilding was supposed to have been realized; so confident were they that both owner and builder were eager to go upon the trial trip; no sufficient tests were made of boilers or bulkheads or gearing or equipment, and no lifesaving or signal devices were reviewed; officers and crew were strangers to one another and passengers to both.

PASSENGERS AND CREW STUPEFIED.

  "Neither was familiar with the vessel or its implements or tools; no drill or station practice or helpful discipline disturbed the tranquility of that voyage, and when the crisis came a state of absolute unpreparedness stupefied both passengers and crew and, in their despair, the ship went down, carrying as needless a sacrifice of noble women and brave men as ever clustered about the judgment seat in any single moment of passing time.

  "We shall leave to the honest judgment of England its painstaking chastisement of the British Board of Trade, to whose laxity of regulation and hasty inspection the world is largely indebted for this awful fatality. Of contributing causes there were very many. In the face of warning signals, speed was increased and messages of danger seemed to stimulate her to action rather than to persuade her to fear.

  "Captain Smith knew the sea and his clear eye and steady hand had often guided his ship through dangerous paths. For forty years storms sought in vain to vex him or menace his craft. But once before in all his honorable career was his pride humbled or his vessel maimed. Each new advancing type of ship built by his company was handed over to him as a reward for faithful service and as an evidence of confidence in his skill.

  "Strong of limb, intent of purpose, pure in character, dauntless as a sailor should be, he walked the deck of this majestic structure as master of her keel, titanic though she was. His indifference to danger was one of the direct and contributing causes of this unnecessary tragedy, while his own willingness to die was the expiating evidence of his fitness to live.

OVERCONFIDENCE AND NEGLECT.

  "Those of us who knew him well—not in anger, but in sorrow—file one specific charge against him, overconfidence and neglect to heed the oft-repeated warnings of his friends; but, in his horrible dismay, when his brain was afire with honest retribution, we can sti11 see, in his manly bearing and his tender solicitude for the safety of women and little children, some traces of his lofty spirit when dark clouds lowered all about him and angry elements stripped him of his command.

  "His devotion to his craft, even as it writhed and twisted and struggled for mastery over its foe, calmed the fears of many of the stricken multitude who hung upon his words, lending dignity to a parting scene as inspiring as it is beautiful to remember.

  "Life belts were finally adjusted and the lifeboats were cleared away, and, although strangely insufficient in number, were only partially loaded, and in instances unprovided with compasses, and only three of them had lamps. They were manned so badly that, in the absence of prompt relief, they would have fallen easy victims to the advancing ice floe, nearly thirty miles in width and rising sixteen feet above the surface of the water.

  "Their danger would have been as great as if they had remained on the deck of the broken hull, and if the sea had risen these toy targets, with over 700 exhausted people, would have been helplessly tossed about upon the waves without food or water. The lifeboats were filled so indifferently and lowered so quickly that, according to the uncontradicted evidence, nearly 500 persons were needlessly sacrificed to want of orderly discipline in loading the few that were provided.

  "The lifeboats would have easily cared for 1,176, and only contained 704, 12 of whom were taken into the boats from the water, while the weather conditions were favorable and the sea perfectly calm. And yet it is said by some well-meaning persons that the best of discipline prevailed. If this is discipline, what would have been disorder?

  "Among the passengers were many strong men who had been accustomed to command, whose lives had marked every avenue of endeavor, and whose business experience and military training especially fitted them for such an emergency.

MEN RUDELY SILENCED.

  "These men were rudely silenced and forbidden to speak, as was the president of the company, by junior officers, a few of whom, I regret to say, availed themselves of the first opportunity to leave the ship. Some of the men to whom had been intrusted the care of passengers never reported to their official stations, and quickly deserted the ship with a recklessness and indifference to the responsibilities of their positions as culpable and amazing as it is impossible to believe.

  "And some of these men say that they 'laid by' in their partially filled lifeboats and listened to the cries of distress 'until the noise quieted down' and surveyed from a safe distance the unselfish men and women and faithful fellow-officers and seamen, whose heroism lightens up this tragedy and recalls the noblest traditions of the sea.

  "Some things are dearer than life itself, and the refusal of Phillips and Bride, wireless operators, to desert their posts of duty to the upper deck because the captain had not given them permission to leave, is an example of faithfulness worthy of the highest praise, while the final exit of the Phillips boy from the ship and from the world was not so swift as to prevent him from pausing long enough to pass a cup of water to a fainting woman, who fell from her husband's arm into the operator's chair, as he was tardily fleeing from his wireless apparatus, where he had ticked off the last message from his ship and from his brain.

  "It is no excuse that the apparatus on the Carpathia was antiquated; it easily caught the signal of distress and spoke with other ships nearly 200 miles away, both before and after the accident, while the operator says it was good for 250 miles. The steamship Californian was within easy reach of this ship for nearly four hours after all the facts were known to Operator Cottam.

  "The captain of the Carpathia says he gave explicit directions that all official messages should be immediately sent through other ships, and messages of passengers should be given preference. According to Binns, the inspector, the apparatus on the Californian was practically new and easily tuned to carry every detail of that calamity to the coast stations at Cape Sable and Cape Race, and could have done so."

CRITICISM FOR CAPTAIN LORD.

  Regarding the part played after the disaster by Captain Lord, the steamship Californian, Senator Smith declares that, while it not a pleasant duty to criticize the conduct of others, the plain truth should be told. Referring to the testimony of repeated signals given from the Californian with Morse lights, he declared:

  "Most of the witnesses of the ill-fated vessel before the committee saw plainly the light, which Captain Lord says was displayed for nearly two hours after the accident, while the captain and one of the officers of the Titanic directed the lifeboats to pull for that light and return with the empty boats to the side of the ship.

  "Why did the Californian display its Morse signal lamp from the moment of the collision continuously for nearly two hours if they saw nothing? And the signals which were visible to Mr. Gill at 12.30 o'clock and afterward, and which were also seen by the captain and officer of the watch, should have excited more solicitude than was displayed by the officers of that vessel, and the failure of Captain Lord to arouse the wireless operator on his ship, who could have easily ascertained the name of the vessel in distress, and reached her in time to avert loss of life, places a tremendous responsibility upon this officer from which it will be very difficult for him to escape.

  "Had he been as vigilant in the movement of his vessel as he was active in displaying his own signal lamp, there is a very strong probability that every human life that was sacrificed through this disaster could have been saved. The dictates of humanity should have prompted vigilance under such conditions, and the law of Great Britain, giving effect to Article II of the Brussels convention in regard to assistance and salvage at sea, is as follows:

  "'The master or person in charge of a vessel shall, so far as he can do so without serious danger to his own vessel, her crew and her passengers (if any), render assistance to every person, even if such person be a subject of a foreign state at war with his Majesty, who is found at sea in danger of being lost, and if he fails to do so, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.'

PRAISE FOR CAPTAIN OF CARPATHIA.

  "The Senate passed on the 18th day of April last a bill giving effect to the same treaty, which clearly indicates the disposition of the Government of England, and our own as well, in matters of this character. Contrast, if you will, the conduct of the captain of the Carpathia in this emergency and imagine what must be the consolation of that thoughtful and sympathetic mariner, who rescued the shipwrecked and left the people of the world his debtor as his ship sailed for distant seas a few days ago.

  "By his utter self-effacement and his own indifference to peril, by his promptness and his knightly sympathy, he rendered a great service to humanity. He should be made to realize the debt of gratitude this nation owes to him, while the book of good deeds, which had so often been familiar with his unaffected valor, should henceforth carry the name of Captain Rostrom to the remotest period of time.

  "With most touching detail he promptly ordered the ship's officers to their stations, distributed the doctors into positions of the greatest usefulness, prepared comforts for man and mother and babe; with foresight and tenderness he lifted them from their watery imprisonment and, when the rescue had been completed, summoned all of the rescued together and ordered the ship's bell tolled for the lost, and asked that prayers of thankfulness be offered by those who had been spared. It falls to the lot of few men to perform a service so unselfish, and the American Congress can honor itself no more by any single act than by writing into its laws the gratitude we feel toward this modest and kindly man.

  "The lessons of this hour are, indeed, fruitless and its precepts ill-conceived if rules of action do not follow hard upon the day reckoning. Obsolete and antiquated shipping laws should no longer encumber the parliamentary records of any government, and over-ripe administrative boards should be pruned of dead branches and less sterile precepts taught and applied."